Japanese Shunning Expensive Local PC Makers

[Mike Oxlong]

Coligny has quite the knack for oscillating between posts in fine colloquial English, and Take-p-ish jibberish...

[FG Lurker]

If someone ask me where they can buy French collection cars I don't tell them like a full blown retard to go to a garage and ask or to read some newspaper until there is a commercial on the topic, or tell them that their question is open ended. Either I give them address or say that I don't know.

Okay, I'll be a bit more serious if I can stop laughing at you long enough.

In your original post you asked (and I quote): "Yeah, but can you have one with qwerty keyboard ? Japanese keyboards are the posterchild of bad design for key notation and placement."

You ask about possible availability of netbooks with QWERTY keyboards. You then get all pissed off that you don't get specific directions on where to buy a US keyboard netbook that take into account that you are nowhere near anywhere that might sell one, that you hate Tokyo, and that you have no access to English language magazines. Yet somehow it's me who is the unreasonable idiot? Yeeeeeeah.

[Grumblebum]

I don't think this is possible but I might be interested in one if it is. AFAIK they don't offer different keyboards or OS languages on their lower-end notebooks.

Just took a quick look at Dell Japan's website and they do in fact offer the option of English or Japanese keyboards on the Mini9..
A bit surprised since in the past as you said they often didn't make the option available for the cheaper home user oriented machines.

[quote="waruta"]Anyways......back on topic....whats the issue with the Japanese Keyboard? Am I missing something or what because I thought they were all QWERTY, with the addition of some different place ment for the @, ", ]

My pet hate with Japanese keyboards is the space bar - on a JP keyboard its not uncommon for it to be less than half the length of that on an US/English keyboard, due to the additional kana/kanji mode keys. This results in making it very easy to hit one of those mode keys when you were trying to hit the space bar.

[Mock Cockpit]

I don't think this is possible but I might be interested in one if it is. AFAIK they don't offer different keyboards or OS languages on their lower-end notebooks.

Just checked Dell Japan and it seems they do offer an English keyboard on their Mini 9. 2GB of RAM and a 32GB SSD.......mmmmmmmmmm.
Edit- sniped.......I snoozed I loozed.

[james]

My pet hate with Japanese keyboards is the space bar - on a JP keyboard its not uncommon for it to be less than half the length of that on an US/English keyboard, due to the additional kana/kanji mode keys. This results in making it very easy to hit one of those mode keys when you were trying to hit the space bar.

you said it. the aggravating thing is i still have zero use for those keys.. i've *never* used 'em.

not much into the notebooks but on my desktop i'm happy with the spacebar on my circa 1991 mexican made at/xt honeywell keyboard. 5" long and 3/4" in girth it's not a tool for the timid

[FG Lurker]

Just took a quick look at Dell Japan's website and they do in fact offer the option of English or Japanese keyboards on the Mini9..
A bit surprised since in the past as you said they often didn't make the option available for the cheaper home user oriented machines.

Very, very weird. They offer it on the consumer version (Inspiron Mini 9) but not the business version (Vostro A90). The business version seems purposely limited in options right now actually.

My pet hate with Japanese keyboards is the space bar - on a JP keyboard its not uncommon for it to be less than half the length of that on an US/English keyboard, due to the additional kana/kanji mode keys. This results in making it very easy to hit one of those mode keys when you were trying to hit the space bar.

Couldn't agree more, especially on a small keyboard where things are cramped already. I have a ThinkPad T60 with a US keyboard and have a US Microsoft Natural Keyboard connected to it for desk use. Both are the perfect layouts for their respective sizes.